The Elixir of Immortality

by Gabi Gleichmann

  In the 1930s new winds were blowing through Nazi Germany. Individuals of Jewish ancestry were progressively excluded from society, and their rights as citizens were abrogated. In 1934 Martin Heidegger became rector of the University of Freiburg. Many had great hopes of the renowned philosopher who had written Being and Time. Some cherished the deluded hope that Freiburg would continue to offer refuge to freethinkers.

  Few were aware that the new rector had long been a dues-paying member of the National Socialist Party. Heidegger devoted his evenings to writing tracts on humanism and philosophical matters but during the day he worked with determination to institute sweeping changes in line with the worldviews of the new German Führer, Adolf Hitler. He dismissed all the Jewish instructors and subjected professors to formal hearings on their views, loyalties, and contacts with Jews. He ordered his staff to take down all of the portraits of persons without clearly documented Aryan ancestry. He cleansed the holdings of the library by having all works by Jews systematically removed. Condemned books and paintings were fuel for a bonfire in honor of German purity.

  Benjamin’s portrait did not wind up in the bonfire.

  My great-uncle told us that the man who saved Benjamin from the flames was none other than Hermann Göring. The Reich Marshal was an art lover and one of the era’s most avid collectors. In his summer palace a few miles outside Berlin, named Carinhall in memory of his late Swedish wife, Göring covered the walls from floor to ceiling with priceless works of art. Every one was stolen. Most came from Jewish homes plundered throughout Nazi-occupied Europe.

  Benjamin’s portrait hung for ten years in the Reich Marshal’s study at Carinhall.

  After the fall of the Thousand-Year Reich the painting mysteriously made its way to the Soviet Union and turned up in General Arkady Bondarchuk’s spacious dacha on the Black Sea.

  Bondarchuk had studied philosophy in Moscow before the Second World War. He had read Bento Spinoza’s Ethics with great interest and spent a lot of time studying the issues of good and evil. He was a great admirer of Bento and assumed that the portrait depicted him.

  For his contributions to the conquest of Berlin the general was subsequently honored with the highest decoration for bravery offered by the workers’ state. Stalin presented the medal to him in a ceremony in the Kremlin to thunderous applause. The ruler called Bondarchuk “my favorite general.”

  Four years later the general was accused of collaborating with the CIA and stealing state property. No one blinked as Stalin had his “favorite general” executed. The traitor’s real name was Aron Bronstain; he was of Jewish ancestry and a distant cousin of Trotsky.

  The fall of the four-star general opened the Soviet dictator’s last great purge. Hundreds of Jewish physicians were murdered. Yiddish culture was virtually wiped out before Stalin and his regime of terror went to their graves.

  Benjamin’s portrait disappeared without a trace, along with all the other contents of the dacha of the executed general.

  THE OTHER PAINTING hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and bears the title Caravaggio Accompanied by the Spinoza Family. The artist’s signature is visible on the far right of the canvas: Rembrandt.

  Here Benjamin is seven years old. He has blue eyes and carefully parted curly black hair, and his face is dominated by an unbelievably large nose. A warm smile suggests great openness, as if the boy wants to tell everyone that the world is full of joy and beauty.

  H.S.—BEHIND THOSE INITIALS IS concealed the only important Jewish writer of the French Enlightenment, a man as daring as he was eccentric, a historian of ideas and ancient times regarded as the world’s first expert on the history of sexual perversion in Athens. The philosopher Michel Foucault analyzed that whole genre in a series of pioneering works, and he asserts that H.S. knew more about that subject or understood it better than anyone else.

  His name was Hector Spinoza, but he inscribed himself into history with his initials, H.S. Or tried to do so. It’s not clear whether he succeeded. In France, a country that loves to honor its geniuses, not a single street, not even a tiny alley bears his name, and he appears nowhere among the fifty thousand biographies of notable Frenchmen in the Dictionnaire Larousse de l’histoire de France. Puzzled by this neglect, I wrote both to the Ministry of Culture and to the publisher of that twenty-volume reference work. The ministry never replied. In contrast, I received a polite but relatively meaningless letter from a certain Maurice Lacouture, who regretted the absence of my relative “Hermann Spinoza” from the Dictionnaire and suggested it might be due to a technical oversight that would surely be corrected in the next edition, due out sometime around 2020. It was obvious to me that the editors had no idea of the identity hidden behind the initials H.S.

  I KNOW relatively little about Hector Spinoza. In fact, I know less about his life than I do about his death.

  My great-uncle seldom mentioned him; he was much more interested in Hector’s daughter, Shoshana. In his memoirs, Jakob Spinoza—my grandfather’s pedantic grandfather, finance minister to Kaiser Franz Josef, and close friend to the ruler, a figure I will say more about in these pages—mentions Hector by name only one time. Voltaire does not mention his friend even once in the notes for his autobiography. On the other hand, however, as my great-uncle pointed out, under the entry for “Philosopher” in his Pocket Dictionary of Philosophy Voltaire does cite maxims of H.S., though without using quotation marks or identifying the source:

  Treat others as you would treat yourself.

  Love humanity in general, especially those who are virtuous.

  Forget injustices but never forget benevolence.

  I have seen men incapable of study but never men incapable of good deeds.

  HERE’S WHAT I KNOW about Hector Spinoza. He lost his mother when he was six years old. She was the only person who was ever close to him. He grew up in Strasbourg, where his father was a merchant. After his nineteenth birthday he left the city of his youth to study law at the Sorbonne. During his years there he read at least a thousand books and taught himself four foreign languages: German, English, Arabic, and Greek. Hector’s obsession with reading was almost limitless; so was his memory. Once he had read something, he retained it forever.

  His interest in abnormal behavior was aroused by Paracelsus’s book Philosophiae et Medicinae utriusque compendium, which he came across in a carton at a used-book stall on the Left Bank of the Seine. He was especially fascinated by the remarks of the Swiss physician and alchemist concerning chameleons, those strange little lizards that change color to match their environment.

  After finishing his studies he set himself up in the practice of commercial law. He quickly outmaneuvered all of his competitors and acquired a clientele more vast than any other Jewish attorney in Paris ever had. His clients were principally aristocrats, and he was adept at increasing their fortunes; not one was ever disappointed. He himself was neither greedy nor profligate but in fact generally indifferent to money. He invested the lion’s share of his considerable income in his unique collection of esoteric literature.

  On one occasion he traveled to Marseille with the sole purpose of purchasing the Talmud that had been the personal possession of Moses Maimonides, the great twelfth-century thinker. Pierre Arditti, the owner of that treasure, was in dire need of funds but refused even after protracted negotiations to part with the obviously priceless book. Arditti could not bring himself to give it up because his family had owned it for more than five hundred years. In a flash of inspiration, Hector offered to marry Arditti’s only child, his daughter, Sophie. He had in fact never met her but he saw that only by marrying her could he procure Maimonides’s Talmud for his collection. Arditti could not turn down the offer of a prosperous Jewish attorney clearly on the rise in Paris society to marry a young woman whose only dowry was a family name honored by the leading Sephardic circles of Marseille. Hector was extremely pleased to discover that Sophie was not ugly in the least; she had quite a handsome face, even if the overall impression wa
s blemished just a bit by the flaming red beauty spot right on the tip of her nose. The simple wedding ceremony took place the very next day.

  This was Hector’s second marriage. His first had lasted only eleven days. His wife had died suddenly of septicemia, the infection known as “blood poisoning.”

  Hector and Sophie had three children and lived in well-furnished comfort in one of the capital’s most exclusive arrondissements. But Hector was never able to put Maimonides’s Talmud into his collection. Arditti outlived both his son-in-law and his daughter, dying eventually at the age of ninety-eight.

  Hector was a complicated individual, single-minded and fixed in his routine. He rose at five o’clock every morning and went to bed at midnight. He was perpetually at work. At home he was authoritarian and domineering. He was quite irritable and complained shrilly when the children got in his way, but there wasn’t a bad bone in his body. He had a great store of affection to share from time to time, whenever he managed to think of something other than his work and writing. In company he was timid and self-conscious; most of the time he walked with eyes downcast, and he preferred to slip away from company. Every first Monday, second Tuesday, and third Wednesday of months not spelled with the letter r—it made no difference whether the weather was splendid or terrible—he would take a stroll in the Jardin de Luxembourg at half past five in the evening. On those occasions he put on his wife’s most elegant clothing and shoes, wore very heavy makeup, and concealed his bald head under the abundant tresses of a woman’s wig. He promenaded with head held high, desirous that everyone should see him. He did not know why he did this. But on those occasions when he was detained for unseemly behavior in public, he persuaded the gendarmes that he was honoring the memory of his dear, departed mother. They always released him the same evening.

  ———

  HECTOR BUSIED HIMSELF with freelance writing as a sideline to his real work. He was fearless and passionate. He made contact with Diderot, d’Alembert, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, the thinkers who inspired the French Revolution.

  They constituted a small group who worked hard and were subject to great pressures, allies in a loosely defined common enterprise. Their guiding spirit was an enthusiastic belief in progress. They believed that the essentially good nature of man had been corrupted by the hardships and discrimination of society but could be redeemed through enlightenment. Society could be reformed. The written word was to be the vehicle of this enlightenment. Their writings were lively, full of optimism and faith in the future. The authorities found them suspect. These radical thinkers were persecuted, silenced, and forced into exile. Their books were burned.

  Hector, the only Jew among them, collaborated in the great Encyclopédie (1751–1780), the bible of the French Enlightenment. He was the only participant obliged to sign with his initials because they wanted to hide his origins. He was greatly displeased by this, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  His unusually brilliant contributions were infused with burning passion. They dealt with religious revolutionaries, utopian thinkers, apostates, and heretics. He considered it a point of honor always to take up controversial subjects, preferably those banned by the authorities. The reading public, those few souls, often regarded his articles with suspicion. But Hector did not doubt his mission; he dreamed of a future world of greater justice in which his work would be viewed with different eyes.

  ———

  HECTOR WROTE a book on the history of masturbation in ancient Athens. With the willing intermediation of Voltaire he had it brought to the attention of Catherine the Great, who in a manner quite unusual for despots was flirting with reformist notions. Hector cherished the secret hope that Her Majesty might endorse his book and open doors throughout Europe. But he received no reply from St. Petersburg. Hector was obliged to do battle with the Parisian censors. It was an unequal match. Six times he was required to make extensive revisions. When the book was finally approved for publication, the entire press run sold out in two hours. Literary lion Olivier Mareau, a servile representative of the regime whose constant theme was the duties of the citizen, quickly penned a vile comic satire ridiculing the pathbreaking work. Hector refused to be intimidated. He circulated handwritten copies of the original, unexpurgated version with his candid views of humanity couched in astonishingly uninhibited language. It was a bold move; in no other text in the French language could one find so many synonyms for the word “penis.” The scandal was enormous. Both the nobility and the bourgeoisie of Paris erupted in fury and called the book filthy and immoral. Minister of the Interior du Saint-Florentin, responsible for the police, retaliated decisively. At midnight, just after Hector had gone to sleep, several gendarmes woke him and hauled him off to an interrogation. The minister threatened to clap him into the Bastille where he could rot away in the company of well-fed rats. Hector sought to defend himself as best he could by citing his sources. By morning he was so exhausted that even though the intense discussion with the minister was still underway, he drowsed off in his chair and in a nightmare imagined hoards of rats attacking him from every direction with their sharp teeth, tearing strips of flesh from his body. He shuddered awake, soaked in sweat, and beseeched du Saint-Florentin to confiscate and burn all copies of the manuscript.

  HECTOR REGARDED VOLTAIRE as the most exalted of his contemporaries. He invited Voltaire to his home for the Sabbath meal a number of times, even though the man disliked all manner of religious observance and had made many deprecatory, even contemptuous comments about the Jews.

  One evening Hector received Voltaire and two elegantly dressed English gentlemen who exuded a strong odor of cologne. The four of them drank cider and had only just seated themselves at the dinner table when Voltaire, in the mood for a bit of provocation, began to inquire whether in Jewish thought there was any justification for the presumption that evil is a necessary condition for the continued existence of the world. The English guests grinned; they were looking forward to an exalted theological discussion.

  The question perplexed Hector. For a few moments he appeared lost in thought. He took off his spectacles, wiped them with a napkin, and then carefully placed them in front of him on the table. He started to say something but changed his mind. He got up from the table as if he had just had a sudden inspiration.

  “Would you like to see something extremely unusual?” he asked. “You will not find a book, in any language at all, in any field of study, that has as much power, as many unique qualities, and as many insights as this one. None! Gentlemen, this book is nonpareil; no book can compare with it and it resembles no other. I shall firmly maintain this contention until the day I die.”

  Without waiting for a response from his guests, Hector went into a side room furnished as an immense library. In higher spirits than he had been for a long time, he began to climb an unusually tall ladder to fetch down his treasure, Benjamin Spinoza’s The Elixir of Immortality.

  The others stood in the doorway, sniffing at the odor of ancient paper and dust and peering through the gloom. As he ascended the ladder, Hector told them in an animated voice that here they were privileged to view the most extensive library of esoterica in Europe.

  “This place is holy.” Hector’s voice was exalted. “Every book you see here has a soul. Within each binding, unsuspected mysteries wait to reveal themselves. Over thirty long years, sparing no expense, I have collected more than three thousand manuscripts of Cabalistic mysticism, more than four hundred original editions of the Talmud, and manuscripts written out by hand by Roger Bacon, Paracelsus, Simon the Wise, and Erasmus of Rotterdam.”

  “My dear Hector,” said Voltaire, “what is this fantastical book you speak of with such warmth?”

  “Patience, cher maître,” replied Hector. “We will get to that in a moment. You must first understand that deep secrets can be found in most of the magnificent books in my library. But they cannot compare with the secrets in this amazing book. Before I open it, let me simply pledge that I will ab
andon myself body and soul to the Prince of Darkness if you detect even a single word of untruth in this book. However, I will pray that hell’s fires burn you all, that pains of the gut will twist you into convulsions, that lightning will lame you, that cancer will strike you, and that like Sodom and Gomorrah you will perish in brimstone and fire and be cast into the abysm—if you fail to keep silent about what you are about to see or reveal to anyone that you have viewed the masterpiece of my sainted grandfather’s father, Benjamin Spinoza.”

  Hector scrambled to the top of the ladder. At the sight of the treasure his eyes glistened with tears. He declared ceremoniously that he had discovered what he had been seeking. If truth existed anywhere in this world, it was between the covers of this book. The following moment, as he reached out to pick it up, he lost his balance and fell headlong to the floor.

  Voltaire and the others heard a heartrending scream. The Englishmen thought they were party to a practical joke. They burst into hysterical laughter. Voltaire stared at them in amazement. He understood immediately what had happened.

  Hector lay lifeless on the floor beneath a heavy, beautifully bound handwritten edition of the Talmud that had fallen on him and crushed his enormous nose and head.

  Voltaire leaned over and pressed one eyelid; with the careful attention of a physician he sought to detect the breath of life from Hector’s lips or the beat of a heart beneath his jacket. His life had ended. Hector lay on the floor as if he had always been there. Voltaire rose and in a stoic tone informed his companions that the wisdom of the Jews, allied with chance and the logic of dark forces, had taken Hector’s life.